


Lay Your Hands

by BannedBloodOranges



Series: Wild Places of Creation [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Burns, M/M, Medical Care, Nursing, Pre-Slash, charity - Freeform, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:27:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: For Joshua Graham, some days are harder than others.Daniel is there on one of these such days.
Relationships: Daniel/Joshua Graham (Fallout)
Series: Wild Places of Creation [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675477
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Lay Your Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.

The rain has fallen swiftly the previous night and reduced the ground to mire and sand. Daniel had to leave early to provide more time for the trek, to fight the water flowing between his boots as he scaled the cliffs to Dead Horse Point. He had been halfway there when Follows Chalk had tracked him. The young man's hands closed around Daniel’s arms, urging him on, and Daniel realised it was one of _those_ times. 

When Daniel arrives at the entrance of Joshua’s cave, Follows Chalk has already left to the sunlight beyond. 

The soil crushes softly underfoot and an answering snarl drifts up from the darkness.

“I’m here, Joshua.” Daniel says, evenly. He does not wish to startle Joshua; he has heard stories where the Burned Man has killed for less.

“There is nothing you can do to help me,” It could be an animal, for all the gravel in it. “Leave me.”

“Exposed to the air, you can fall victim to infection,” Daniel reaches the heart of the cave, and flicking his lighter slowly begins to illuminate the circle of candles.

Joshua’s table sits neglected. Beyond that is a movement of huddled shadow, tatty gauze visible in the candlelight. Blackened fingers drag the bandages away into the dark.

“Joshua.” Daniel sits down his kit, and reignites the dying campfire. “The pain is bad today?”

The head motions a nod.

“Alright.” Daniel pulls out the salve, the fresh gauze, and what he had struggled to keep cool in the warm rains. An icebox.

The figure goes still.

“Joshua,” He crosses his legs, just short of the light. He clicks open the icebox, lets the vapour curl cooling into the air. “Come to me. I can help. You know I can.”

Slowly, the figure emerges. Daniel holds his breath and soaks a rag in the ice.

“Lay across my lap,” he offers. “This will curb some of the burns.”

“The pain,” Joshua gasps, his powerful voice weakened to a needlepoint. Daniel aches with pity. “It is as if I am living through it again.”

“You are not.” Daniel extends the weeping rag, and Joshua gasps at the sight of it. “You are not alone in this. You never were.”

The Burned Man scampers to lie across his knees. Daniel swathes his body in ice water in place of the bandages. It rushes from his fingers in crystalline cool, and Joshua arches into it, opening his mouth, allowing the chill to pool on his tongue. It is a quick remedy, and not permanently effective, but it edges off the torture, numbs the screaming nerves until Joshua can think straight again. 

“Thank you.” He has no lips to see, but the shape of his mouth plays against Daniel’s stomach. For a minute, he feels strange, that he has become used to Joshua's weight, shape. In the dark, he could find him easily. “Thank you.”

Daniel tips his head tensely, unable to bear the gravity of Joshua's strange blue eyes. He removes from his medical bag the antiseptic and the herbal salve and slowly begins to strip away the remaining dressings.

Beneath his bandages and what remains of his flesh, decades of hard tact and conflict have moulded Joshua's body into warrior form. Daniel wonders it is due to this that he has survived as he has. He cannot explain - nor can any of his remaining family - why he'd faced down snipers and bullets and fire to remain alive. It is a mystery, but this part of their two-day custom regulates the mystery to everyone but Daniel. Joshua is the only one to permit him close, to see him with this frailty.

"Lord knows that although I am marked by hellfire," Joshua scrapes his teeth, watching Daniel roll the flat knife in the herbal brew. It's dense and stinking but it curbs inflammation. It is of Waking Cloud's design, but it is, at least according to Joshua, the most effective pain killer that doesn't contend with the antiseptic. "I walk toward his light. Daniel..."

Joshua's hand halts Daniel's knife, inching it out of his hands, and with a growl, flings it into the corner. Daniel startles but is careful to level his gaze directly at Joshua's eyes, blue and bulging within the crimson strip of his face.

"Use your hands," He pleads, clawing at his chest and shoulders. Daniel hisses at the sight. "So few touch me. I cannot even touch myself." He rides out his palms; mottled, pink, exposed. "Please."

The fire crackles deftly in the cave. Rain drips from the ceiling and falls on Daniel’s cheeks.

He retrieves a rag and dips it in the spirit, languidly cleaning his hands, the bite of it stinging the scrapes and burns that map his short life here.

"Hold still." He sighs, deeply, and guides Joshua to rest on the medical mat as he proceeds to lay his palms on Joshua's ulcerated skin. It weeps, cracks as he presses down and Joshua keens behind his teeth, a mix of agony and rapture.

"If it becomes unbearable,” Daniel’s breath tremors. “Tell me to stop."

"It is unbearable to wander through this darkness, untouched." Joshua rasps. Without his ligatures, it as if what contains him as a legend breaks away. Here, he is merely a man, curling into Daniel as if he is a prayer. "For nothing to touch my skin, but failure." He sneers. "The fire that burns inside and against me. Insatiable."

Daniel massages the salve into the skin, before wrapping bandages around the exposed sinew of his limbs. Daniel covers him until he moves to his lower body, knowing that is the place where Joshua usually stops him, and true to tradition, Joshua reluctantly pushes him back.

"I will do the rest," He whispers. "But do not leave me yet. Beside the fire is my scripture. Read to me."

Daniel nods and retrieves his book, settling beside the nestled glow of the campfire. He turns respectfully away as Joshua removes the rest of his shredded dressings. Daniel reads; the flutter of his breath animating the dance of the fire, accompanied by the shift and creak as Joshua wraps himself anew.

He reads the same words he has chorused since he was child, picks out the passages that bring them mutual comfort. He reads, lost in it before he realises that there is no longer any motion from Joshua and that the Legend, now freshly dressed in cloth and gauze, watches him intently through the tangle of the flames.

Daniel closes the book.

"You did not have to stop," Joshua rumbles, thoughtful.

"I..." Daniel chuckles, his cheeks warm. "I was not aware that I was talking so much. You must be hungry."

"Hm, yes." Joshua rises with ease. A tingle agitates the back of Daniel’s neck. "I will admit. I do have an appetite. Did you bring...?"

"Yes." Daniel places his bag between them. Inside is fresh fruit, salted hard celery, twists of meat and pure water fresh from the spring. "I brought us lunch."

"Hm. Very kind." Joshua sits beside him and waits for Daniel to take his first share. Daniel does, and as Joshua finally helps himself, he speaks, composed and calmly authoritative, the War Chief beloved by the Dead Horses. "Thank you, Daniel. It was good of you to come out here today, what with the rains."

"I made a promise." Daniel snaps his celery in two. "To aid our kin, I will travel to them regardless."

"Yes." Joshua angles his face to the dark to eat his food. The bandages are picked apart ever carefully, and Daniel feels his fingers itch as Joshua swallows. He leaves the salted celery. Daniel is not surprised. "For kin, we do everything for. It is in strangers and sinners that our true challenge is borne."

Daniel thinks of the strangers and sinners that have been left dismembered, unmarked, throughout the valley since Joshua's return. Since he'd seen the body they'd brought in from the river four years ago, saw the Burned Man walk among the people. The elders had looked toward him with love. The young ones, with awe.

Daniel had looked at him with suspicion and has hated himself for that since.

Joshua asks him questions, about the Narrows and the scriptures and the movement of the Big Horner herd, and Daniel obliges, filling the space with whatever information may seem relevant (and less so, but he thinks Joshua grows weary of the silence.)

Finally, Daniel gets to his feet. There is always work to be done back at his camp.

Joshua uncharacteristically guides him to the door.

"Kin." He whispers. "When all else has been lost to the tide, that is what always remains."

He cups Daniel's head, lowering his chin to kiss his brow. Daniel feels the scratch of gauze, the press of exposed teeth and bone. Yet he closes his eyes, and trembles with it, for he knows this shape and scent, and his hands rest on Joshua's forearms.

"Now." Joshua steps back, his hand retreating from Daniel’s cheek. "Go, until we see each other again."

"Yes." Daniel retreats down the stairs. Follow-Chalk glances between them, fascinated. "Until then."

Joshua's parting words are drowned out by the new storms blowing in from the west.

"God be with you."


End file.
